This morning’s announcement of the banning of Islam4UK came as a little – but not much – of a surprise to me, and is another sign of a growing loss of our traditional British acceptance of eccentricity and the more lunatic fringes of thought. Although perhaps the suggestion by Home Secretary Alan Johnson that this group of a very few men (and I think they were mainly men) possessed with the kind of peculiar delusions that were demonstrated in their plans for a revamped Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace (now sadly removed from their website) were a real terrorist threat are probably equally delusional. It is rather as if Parliament had decided to ban engineering in the UK and announced a ban on the works of Heath Robinson.
British Muslims for Secular Democracy protest against Islam4UK
Islam4UK is a group I’ve twice missed photographing, once when I got tired and went home before a confrontation between them and several hundred in the ‘One Law for All’ campaign last March, and then last October when they cancelled their ‘March for Sharia‘ through central London, but a counter demonstration by both moderate and right wing groups still went ahead.
Al-Muhajiroun was quite probably more of a serious threat, along with Omar Bakri Muhammad (and both were banned some years ago.) But although Islam4UK claimed to be its successor (and its leader Anjem Choudary was previously one of Al-Muhajiroun’s leaders) it appears to have attracted little support and almost universal condemnation from British Muslims – but considerable attention for its media-grabbing proposals from the UK press. “Mad Muslims” seem always to be good for circulation.
In the BBC news bulletin that carried the announcement seconds after it was made public, the suggestion was made that another Islamic group, Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, should also be banned. Bakri split away from this group in the 1990s, having helped to build it up, because he found its policies insufficiently radical.
Women in Hizb ut-Tahrir march, October 2004
I’ve photographed quite a few of their public events in London since a 2004 when they held a rally and march by a thousand or two supporters to the Pakistani High Commission against Presidents Bush and Musharraf, calling for a caliphate in Pakistan. They were back at the embassy again (now its Obama and Zardari) on 5th December last year but I was busy with other things.
Hizb ut-Tahrir march against anti-terror measures , October 2005
In 2005 I photographed their “March For Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir And Chechnya … Before They Make It A Crime” which also opposed the extradition of Babar Ahmad* to the USA, the prescription of non-violent Islamic organisations (including Hiszb Ut-Tahrir Britain,) and other measures that attempt to silence legitimate political dissent.
Shaban ul-Haq, Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, 2004
Obviously Hizb ut-Tahrir is a considerably more serious political organisation, but although it aims to restore a Caliphate in the Muslim world, its states that it “does not work in the West to change the system of government, but works to project a positive image of Islam to Western society and engages in dialogue with Western thinkers, policymakers and academics.”
While I would not want to live in the kind of Islamic state proposed by Hizb ut-Tahrir and find some of their views inconsistent with my own understanding of human rights and equality (as some of those of more extreme Christian groups and others also are) I am not aware of any justification for banning their activities here in the UK, although I’m sure it would be a popular decision in Pakistan.
Babar’s father Ashfaq Ahmad speaks at Hizb ut-Tahrir rally, 2005
* Babar Ahmad, arrested and brutally assaulted by the Met Police in December 2003 (the High Court concluded he was the subject of a “serious, gratuitous and prolonged” attack and they paid uyp £60,000 compensation) has been held in prison without trial since the USA applied for his extradition on charges of being involved in web sites supporting Chechen and Afghan insurgents. A decision is expected shortly on the review by The European Court of Human Rights of his extradition case.